Kupang

Hi everyone,
We arrived in Kupang at about 2200 last night and are now anchored amongst the large fleet of Sail Indonesia yachts.

Passing western Timor

Ready for arrival in Indonesia

We had a great sail over the last 40nm or so.  A nice SW sea breeze came in at lunchtime at about 8 knots giving us a close reach down the west coast of Timor towards Kupang harbour.  It died at around sunset but then a nice SE wind came in and built up to around 25 knots.  That took us all the way into Kupang harbour, almost laying the fleet at anchor.  We motored the last half mile as we dropped and stowed the mainsail.

It was fun picking a spot to anchor amongst the 70+ boats late at night.  We found a spot, and were immediately hailed by the boat upwind of us which was our friends on The Doctor welcoming us to Kupang.  After half an hour tidying up and relaxing we turned in for some rest.

This morning we shifted position to be closer to the landing beach, anchoring in 4m about 200m offshore.  We were called by Sail Indonesia and given instructions for clearing in.  We went ashore as instructed and were met by a group of Indonesian officials.  Eight of them wanted to inspect the boat and they arranged a power boat to take us all out to Zen Again.  The trip was exciting, especially when the outboard control cable broke and we took off in full reverse power for a short while.  Happily control was maintained when we came alongside.

Kupang adjacent to the anchorage

The anchorage

The anchorage

The inspection took about 30 minutes, including a quite thorough inspection and various form filling.  Additionally everyone was taking lots of happy snaps of the process, and especially when we lowered our Q flag and then rehoisted the Indonesian courtesy flag.

From there we returned ashore and were asked to wait.  We joined many of the other yachties and some expat locals at the beachside cafe and had some much needed coffee.  After an hour or so we were invited to proceed to the office, where the "one stop shop" clearing in office had been kept open for us.  We're the last yacht to arrive due to our delay in Dili.  In the office we proceeded around the desks manned by officials from various departments and were fully cleared in within 15 minutes.  Everyone was very friendly and efficient, and most had better English than we have Bahasa.  I think we handed over about 8 copies of our crew list, 6 of our CAIT, 3 of Zen Again's registry and 1 of our passport photo page.

Later in the morning we walked 500m east of the Sail Indonesia area to Cellular Central where we managed to buy, install, activate and test SIM cards for our iPhones for 100,000Rp (AU$10) each, and add 50,000Rp (AU$5) initial credit.

Getting both cleared in and phones working by lunchtime was unexpectedly rapid.  We had lunch back at the cafe, chatting with a group of Aussie expats who live here.  Then it was back to the boat to scan and copy the various documents received while clearing in.  This evening we hope to join some of the Dili Rally boats ashore for dinner.

Hope all's well where you are.